I think McPantses must be seeing the kiddie commercials on Saturday mornings, because otherwise, we stick to Noggin and the Food Network (she prefers Alton Brown) and, when they’re not showing depressing dead or injured animals, Animal Planet.

For weeks, she’s been talking about some amazing talking doll named Amanda. A month or so ago, all of us were at Toys R a Mess looking for birthday presents for a party the next day and McPantses and the Husband found a stack of Amazing Amandas. I couldn’t imagine the doll, which is plasticy and hideous in nature, being particularly expensive, so we decided that if it was less than $20, McPantses could have it.

After a price check, McPantses was slumped over in posture and crying–not just sniffling, but sobbing–so I knew things hadn’t gone well. It turned out that Amazing Amanda was $99.99. I didn’t mean to laugh, but I couldn’t help it. While the Lee Middleton doll seemed worth the steep price, plastic Amazing Amanda did not (and still does not).

We spent a long time talking on the way home about how television commercials are made to trick you into wanting things you don’t really want or need. We talked about how things often look better on commercials than they really are and we finished our conversation by saying that maybe she could ask a grandparent for Amazing Amanda for her birthday.

This weekend, the Husband hauled McPantses to visit his grandmother (the one who is terminally ill) while the boychild and I headed to the ped’s office for an ear check.* The inlaws were with the grandmother and my mother-in-law, who already knew about Amazing Amanda, thanks to our “so what does she want for her birthday” conversation a week or so ago, took McPantses to the toy store for a birthday shopping trip.

Lo and behold, Amazing Amanda came home with McPantses. She was thrilled with her doll (who became Polly dolly’s big sister, you know) and the in-laws and the Husband worked to get all the crapmo information straight (you have to program the damn thing to get it to work) and there was much joyous playing.

Then McPantses and the Husband made the 90-mile drive home, with Amanda turned on (and speaking) most of the way. Finally, McPantses turned Amanda off and had a fascinating (to her parents) conversation with the Husband about commercials.

She ended up telling him, in her roundabout, 4 yr old way that she loves Amanda and she doesn’t want to send her back or anything, but that she can see now that the commercials are right. I teared up when the Husband told me about it. He said it was a pretty neat conversation.

That’s kind of a bittersweet thing for a kid to suss out on her own, isn’t it?

Amazing Amanda, by the way, is on her second set of batteries already. I am trying not to give in to my unreasonable fear that Amazing Amanda is going to rise up in the middle of the night and kill us all.

* Someone should have told me, when I took McPantses into the ped’s office on Tuesday, I think it was, for an ear check, that when you have more than one kid, you might as well plan a repeat visit to the ped’s office later in the week for colds and ears. They should offer some sort of twofer pricing. Both kids’ ears are fine. Master Crabcake (and I, it appears) have the thrush and we’re sharing a bottle of Nystatin. Mmmmm, sticky.

I got tagged by the Hi Heeled Designs hotties, so here goes! I’m to write 20 things that I haven’t blogged about before. I sat down last night to do this and found it difficult because I’ve been naval-gazing at this blog for a couple of years now.

Ah, first, in my notes, it says, “insert Husband joke,” so here’s my conversation on this topic from last night with the Husband:

Me: I got tagged and I have to write blah blah blah. How cool is that?

The Husband: Tagged? That’s not cool! Tagged? I don’t like the sound of that.

Me: [explanation]

The Husband: If I’m not tagging you no one else gets to, either.

waka waka waka

1. I come home from work almost every day and put on pajama pants.

2. I have been writing a book and its sequel in my head since I was 21. I started writing it for an independent study project in my first round of grad school. I think about the characters on a daily basis and I have the plots completely outlined and there are little stacks of notes and written scraps hidden in my underwear drawer next to this book.

3. I could happily wear some form of khaki pants, white button down shirt and pricey loafers (preferably black) every day for the rest of my life.

4. I have received 4 compliments in life that I will never forget. A couple of them are moderately lame, but I’m still proud of one from age 14.

5. I love Chef Boyardee pepperoni pizza. I can eat a whole one by myself. I haven’t done it since before I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, tho.

6. If left to my own devices, I would paint my bathroom Tiffany’s blue laquer and use several coats and make it seriously shiny.

7. I worry that my daughter is just like me. When she accomplishes something even though she’d rather quit, like ice skating last Sunday, I am secretly relieved because she’s already doing better than I would have.

8. No matter how angry I might be at my husband, I still always know in a tiny dark corner of my Grinchy heart that I married the one person God put on this earth for me to marry, so I am probably stuck with him (and he with me, poor suckah) for life.

9. My mother and I have the same horrid annoying telephone habit. It’s known as The Follow-Up Call.

10. I secretly like that my mean cat, Zelda, is mean to everyone but me.

11. I am afraid that the more time I spend on the internet, the stupider I get.

12. Most of the time that I am not at work, I don’t have on any makeup. I spent my entire maternity leave with a naked face and can go from bare-faced to fully spackled in about four minutes.

13. I love to see women succeed. I think men are groomed to rise among their peers and women often aren’t, so it’s a big deal, to me, when a woman grows a successful business.

14. My handwriting is legendary. I’m going to have it made into a font.

15. I hate to admit I’ve been napping and if someone calls when I am asleep during the day, I will lie about it and say that I am awake. I cannot explain why I do this, but I do.

16. I wore a pedometer to work yesterday to see how many steps I walked during the day and I even walked two blocks (there and back) to get lunch and the damn thing said 601 steps when I got home. I thought it must be broken, so I checked carefully. It’s not.*

17. I hate to garden, mostly because I hate to touch dirt or get it under my fingernails. I also hate to carve pumpkins for the same reason. We have a terra cotta pumpkin. McPantses has no idea that she’s missing out.

18. It is possible that I know every word of every episode of Absolutely Fabulous.

19. My sister’s friend has every episode of thirtysomething on tape. She also has neatly organized notebooks with the synopsis of every episode. I would like to own these things and I’m really glad that I am married so that I don’t have to hide my inner total dork from the free world.

20. I took golf lessons in grad school and I own a nice set of golf clubs. They’re gathering dust in a closet right now. I would like to thank the Husband for this one.

I tag Accidental Julie and K of Magnificent Bliss. Sarah, I was going to tag you, but you’re done already, so I’m also tagging Miss Paisley Wallpaper.

I’m also going to extend the tagging to bloggers who aren’t paper people because I want to see the circle widen, so I tag my bookish pal and my other bookish pal.

* ETA: Something must have happened or I accidentally reset the thing when I checked it at some point yesterday, because I looked at the pedometer just now and I’m at just over 1000 so far today and I haven’t walked 2 blocks and back. I feel slightly vindicated.

Sad: someone got here by googling this phrase

Laurie Berkner’s tits.

Amused: heard on the way out of the kids’ daycare this morning: “J., do you want to take off some of those shirts?” I assume J had on a nice selection of his favorite shirts this a.m. and can only imagine the conversation about getting dressed at his house.

I just wanted to take a quick moment to wave at an online friend expecting her fourth child in the spring and tell her that I wish her and her growing family well.

There is a grouping of wonderful crafting blogs that I check on a near-daily basis. I read over them and I drool and sigh. They inspired me to sew a critter (who remains headless on the second sideboard–the non-booze cabinet one–in my dining room) and to gather up a small collection (5 or 6) of Japanese craft books and a few pairs of sock monkey-worthy argyle socks. They make me want to sew and paint and draw and stitch and on and on and on.

Look at Wee Wonderfuls and angry chicken and little birds and six and a half stitches. They make me want to hoard fabulous decorator fabrics and twill tape (scroll down to 10/19) to embroider in my free time (seriously, isn’t that the cutest stuff ever?). They make me want to trace my child’s drawings onto things to embroider (wouldn’t a simple flour sack towel embroidered with McPantses’ drawing be a swell gift for a doting grandparent?).

But I can’t do it all.

I don’t have time.

Ever.

No time at all.

So I realized yesterday as I was thinking about my crafting ADD (someone wisely pointed out that I concentrate on a project, buy the crapola for it, get started and then never finish it) and how I see the amazing things the women I linked above can accomplish with their time that I need to just step back. I can’t compete–I can’t even get started, really.* I need to enjoy the beautiful blogs for what they are: bits of utter gorgeousness to inspire dreams.

Crafty people, I commend you. Your blogs are the stuff my dreams are made of. They’re sort of the bitter end of a long summer, I guess, because it’s what I half expected to be doing with myself this fall, if that makes any sense.

But I don’t have time.

And I don’t know when I will.

That’s mostly okay because, really, what better thing to take up my time than the morsels of perfection that are McPantses and Crabcake and the college football-obsessed Husband? We won’t count the 40 hours a week I offer up to the paycheck gods.

I can’t do everything the amazing women are doing, but I can get out the thread to string up the ornaments McPantses and I made from orange and white sculpey clay a week or two ago to hang on the tree for Halloween decorations. I can throw in another batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins with McPantses perched on the kitchen counter to help, too.** Last night, the Husband and I sat down and used embroidery thread (a personal favorite of mine; we chose green for the pumpkins and orange for the ghosts) to hang a bunch of sculpey clay Halloween ornaments on the white wire tree–the Husband hefted McPantses up in the air to decorate the tree and I hefted her onto the kitchen counter to help get the muffin ingredients together.

Simple fun for all of us and meaningful for the girlchild. It’s the best I can do and it counts.

Many of the amazing blogs I linked above offer gorgeous bits and bobs for sale and they’re things they made with their own two hands. Buy them. Support their endeavors. Most of all, instead of envying their perfection (as I have been), step back and be inspired to do a little something with your family (as I am trying to do, I guess).

It’s so hard to make it all work sometimes. Remind me to stop and just get something done for a change, will you, instead of starting, starting, starting all the time. Finish something. Start small, self.

* I do not mean that I am competing with these women because I certainly am not. It’s just an expression. Besides, I think it’s clear from the content of this navel-gazing bloggity blah that I’m pretty much only ever competing with myself.

** That kid can crack an egg like nobody’s business. She’s making me proud.

*** Happy moment: on the way into take the kids to school this morning, I reached into the pocket of a coat that I clearly haven’t put on since the first week of March because I pulled out the tiny stripey baby hat that they stuck on the boychild in the hospital when he was born. Alas, it only smells like coat pocket (I had to check, you know) and not at all like tiny baby Charlie’s head.

ETA: One more amazing crafty blog for you to peruse. Her quilts are phenomenal–she should sell them. Her pouches and bags are droolworthy.

I think one of the reasons I like the beautiful crafty blogs is because they look like they’re written in the kinds of houses where it would be a pleasure to wake up in the morning as a guest.

Does that make sense?

our liquor cabinet contains the remnants of several bottles of bourbon and scotch that have seen their better days. On any given night, there’s an inch of Knob Creek here and two shots of Maker’s Mark there, along with beer in the fridge, wine (if only the one lonely bottle of sweet German stuff neither of us wants to drink) in the wine rack, and vodka in the freezer, plus the randoms (orange liqueur–the cheap stuff: I don’t care what you say, it all tastes the damn same–tequila, vermouth).

The Husband doesn’t like to empty the bourbons all at once because he fears it makes him look like a lush. So, tonight I opened the sideboard* with confidence because I remembered the bottles in there from last week.

Sadly, all that remains in the non-random category is one bottle of McCallan’s.

I am thirsty, but I haven’t developed a taste for single malt, by crappie.

It’s finally gotten cold here, and by cold, I mean hovering dangerously near the 50 degrees mark, and I want something to warm my belly, not chill it. I don’t have a taste for vodka right now.

But if it’s all there is, I reckon I can slug back a shot of it.

* The sideboard contains everything important in our house that’s not alive, handsewn, a computer, jewelry or first locks of hair: liquor, fine china, 1001 cocktail napkins–the cloth kind, you tacky sluts–and silvah, silvah and more silvah. It’s a true testament to my selfish and materialistic nature that I would dare call any of those things important, but there you have it.

Cheers.

ETA: piggishness won out over boozehounding. I opted for a big bowl of popcorn and a lot of ice water.

Also, I feel terrible alcohol guilt this morning because I realize I left out two good liquor cabinet friends, the gentlemen Jim (Beam) and Jack (Daniels). My feelings are hurt on their behalf. Signed, she who once drove the Husband a good two and a half hours out of the way just so we could sniff the heady goodness that is Lynchburg TN.

We had a smashing weekend together, starting with breakfast and a park outing Saturday morning and ending with McPantses ice skating for the first time with her daddy.

She chose ice skating as her marble jar reward several weeks ago and it’s taken us this long to find a moment to squeeze in the adventure. I find ice skating to be extraordinarily difficult, but that might be because I have a hard enough time just walking from point A to point B without falling down. McPantses is like me in that respect–she’s a walking bruise factory. Thus, the Husband and I were worried that she’d hate it, so when we loaded everyone up and headed for the skating rink located conveniently in the center of a mall, we figured we might not be there for long.

Lo and behold, tho McPantses didn’t take to it immediately, she persevered and stayed out there long enough for Third and me to eat both a big squishy pretzel and a chocolate chip cookie while we strolled around and watched the skaters. She cannot wait to go out there again, which impresses me to no end.

In other non-news, I learned to crochet last week and am attempting this shawl in an incredible mercerized cotton and started a second one in a lovely yarn comparable to the Lions whatever recommended in the pattern. The crochet pattern is beyond easy and consists of one stitch. Someone who works in my building took me through the stitch in record time. Lion also provides a knitting pattern for the shawl. I’d like to complete (haha) one and then try one doubly long to use as a small throw.

More Random Links!

Feel like doing a little fiction writing?

Working a day job while your imagination crafts and creates? Worried about losing your touch while involved in the go-go-go corporate lifestyle and bringing home a swell paycheck? Travel over here and steal a moment for yourself and your creativity.

A paper wow for those of you who are currently behind on your thank-yous (Frances McPantses heartily disapproves of this and raises an eyebrow at you): Fontaine Maury. Cute stuff and an impossibly cute site that I’d like to just dive into for awhile, because surely, if I did, someone would bring me a late-afternoon bourbon and a lemon bar.

It’s not too early to order cute Christmas ornaments or one of a zillion other cute things from Coton Colors. I had the supreme pleasure of meeting these ladies at Market in Atlanta last January and fell in love with them, their products and their booth.

Amuse your kids so you can spend more time clickety-click-clicking random links on the internet while the kiddos color, okay? Buy them some big ole post it notes. I want them for myself.

I will admit with great reluctance that I didn’t find most of the above links on my own. I thank the people from whom I swiped them, even if I don’t remember who the people are. The links are just things I particularly like and have in my bookmarks. Browse, shop and enjoy.

ROLL TIDE!

eta: The Husband says that Alabama won a national championship the year my father-in-law was born. Alabama won a national championship the year the Husband was born. He’s having a Very Special talk with Charlie Crabcake Third right now.

The pressure’s on.

Still, tho, SUCK IT, VOLS!

1941 Crimson Tide:

1973 Crimson Tide: